Barbara Dalzell

Barbara Dalzell was a trailblazer for women in the once male-dominated world of the newspaper subeditors' desk. Coming from New Zealand in 1972, she moved rapidly through newspaper offices to become the first woman chief subeditor on any London daily paper, at the Financial Times.

Received wisdom used to be that the subs' desk was a place of a male discourse too brutal for feminine sensibilities. If there was any truth in that, it was not a problem for Dazzle (as her friends called her), who could effortlessly respond to banter. She could also shift impressive quantities of alcohol and tobacco, a gift that sadly contributed to her death, from throat cancer, at the age of 57.

Dazzle was a born subeditor. She had the right qualities - sharp perception, quick thinking, clear-headedness, good humour and the guts to stand by her judgment. She was outstanding at page production, always getting her pages assembled on time - pages that "fit", in the old "hot metal" sense, that needed little adjustment. This was partly down to her positive relations with the printers, whom she treated with respect.

Dazzle trained as a journalist after school and got her first job at the New Zealand Press Association. Aged 19, she married Andy MacIver and they both went to work on the Timaru Herald. When they came to England, Dazzle became the first woman sub on the Bedford County Times, an achievement repeated within a year after she was taken on at the London office of the group that owned it, Westminster Press. There she was a militant mother (shop steward) of the National Union of Journalists chapel.

From 1974 she had a spell on the Guardian, and from there went to the FT, where in 1984 she was made home news chief sub. In 1986 the FT moved her to be production editor of its new weekend supplement. But Dazzle missed the buzz of daily production. After the paper went over to computerised production in 1987, she contracted repetitive strain injury, and suffered pain in her arms for the rest of her life. She had to stop work in 1989 but instead put her energy into the NUJ's campaigning work for her fellow RSI sufferers.

In 1992 she semi-retired to Bexhill in East Sussex with her partner Sinclair Robieson, who survives her.